Breastfeeding – What to Wear?

Thanks for hopping over from Family Fever and welcome to my post for the Keep Britain Breastfeeding Scavenger Hunt Day 3 Dress to Impress sponsors today include Milk and Mummy with a £50 voucher, Lorna Drew Maternity who are offering a beautiful set of nursing lingerie and Mummy Makes Milk who is offering a signed copy of her beautiful book for our Grand Prize winner. Over £700 worth of goodies are up for grabs entries via the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

I have been breastfeeding Boo for nearly 20 months now and I have to say that I have gotten I good idea of what works for breastfeeding easily and what just doesn’t.  In the pasts 20 months I have attended a couple of weddings, been to the park a million times and fed Boo in public lots. I have bought a few pieces of nursing clothing, but in the early days because I only really intended to feed for 6 months I didn’t want to spend too much money. (I needed that money for tiny baby clothes!)

So in terms of breastfeeding what to wear? I would say that I have only three essentials, especially for those early days a non-wired nursing bra, cheap vest tops and breastpads.  (I know you don’t really wear breastpads as clothes but they are essential! I leaked from the side I wasn’t feeding from every single feed until Boo was about 8 months)

I went for some basic nursing bras and they, sadly, made my boobs look like they had no shape and hung around my belly button (after the excess of milk had disappeared that is).  I really wish I had invested in a good bra earlier and I actually ended up buying some beautiful bras from Hot Milk and now I wear nothing else.  I am writing a review of these wonderful bras which will go live later this week so please check it out.

Once I had invested in some quality nursing bras I actually felt a lot better about my post-pregnancy body –  and realised that I did indeed have a waist again – which was an added bonus!

Cheap Vest Tops are a must for me – the two top method is great, I bought a variety of vest tops in every colour I could find and just wore them under my clothes – my top up and the vest top down meant I exposed very little of myself when I was feeding and I felt comfortable because my belly was covered.

But obviously there are occasions when a vest top and a tshirt is not going to be the right thing to wear.  I had a couple of formal occassions to attend whilst Boo was breastfeeding during the day and I had to think carefully about what I was going to wear.  In the end I went for dresses with easy boob access, but thinking back (I sound like such a skinflint in this post!!) I should have treated myself to some proper nursing dresses so that I could have worn dresses more often.

When Boo was about 8 months old my brother got married and of course we attended his wedding, I needed a dress for the wedding ceremony and the reception.  I wore the dress I wanted for the wedding reception – we then went back to our hotel room and I fed Boo and changed into another dress for the reception which was a strappy dress with easy boob access.

I am very casual in my everyday clothes I live in jeans and tshirts/tops so breastfeeding for me required very little change in wardrobe (mainly for two reasons… a) I am stingy and b) because I only intended to feed for 6 months and then to a year etc… I never really felt like I should invest in my nursing wardrobe).  I have, I will confess, spent some hours looking at all the gorgeous nursing wear that is on offer – and to be perfectly honest if I had know I would still be feeding at 19 months I would have bought more nursing wear – there are some really fantastic clothes which look beautiful and have easy access to breastfeed.

What are your essential clothing items for breastfeeding or just after you have given birth?

You can find some more ideas on Dressing to Impress over on LycraWidow blog along with another chance to gain some extra entry points to our grand prize giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway